How Walton Ford’s Loudest Paintings Redirect Your Gaze

To paint a glamorous woman, naked but for a loosely hung fur coat and a long drape of pearls, and have her not be the focal point of an image is just one of the striking aspects of Walton Ford’s new series of paintings, on view at Gagosian in New York through April 19. Based on the artist’s research into the Marchesa Luisa Casati, the paintings are far more interested in the experience of her feline companions: two dazzling cheetahs she reportedly paraded along the canals of Venice.